Fine Art PR Publicity Announcements News and Information
Fine Art PR Publicity Announcements News and Information

New University of Texas Visual Arts Center Exhibitions

The Visual Arts Center in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin has announced its inaugural fall season, exhibitions that include works by emerging artists from around the world, renowned faculty, and notable students and alumni.

The Visual Arts Center (VAC) will open its doors for the first time in September to showcase these exhibitions throughout the 25,061 square foot space, featuring five new galleries and three public spaces. The five galleries at the VAC are the Vaulted Gallery, the Arcade, the Mezzanine Gallery, the East Gallery and Center Space.

The exhibition schedules are as follows:

Ry Rocklen, “ZZZ’s” Sept. 24–Dec. 18
“ZZZ’s” is a site-specific installation by Los Angeles-based artist Ry Rocklen. The installation at the Vaulted Gallery reflects Rocklen’s artistic processing of found components of the city, incorporating elements of Thai Buddhism and mystic rituals to explore our contemporary connection to commonplace objects. Rocklen’s works have been featured in the Museum of Modern Art, PS1 and the 2008 Whitney Biennial, as well as numerous national and international solo exhibitions.

Lucky Dragons, “Sumi Ink Club Session,” Sept. 26–Oct. 16
Los Angeles-based Lucky Dragons, an experimental artist collective and music group consisting of artists Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Anderson, present a multitude of projects to christen the Visual Arts Center’s Arcade space. Lucky Dragons will hold their first Sumi Ink Club meeting in Austin on Sept. 26. This Sunday afternoon event will result in a collaborative drawing on the freshly created walls of The Arcade. Lucky Dragons will present an interactive, site-specific performance and introduce a collection of videos.

Fischbeck and Anderson have presented interactive performances and installations in a variety of contexts, including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Various Artists, “Deconstruct + Reconstruction,” Sept. 24–Oct. 23
“Deconstruct + Reconstruction” features eight artists who challenge structure, conventions and the idea of a totality. The works examine the decomposition of social conventions, domestic structures and art materials in physical and conceptual ways.

Magali Lara, “Glaciers,” Sept. 24–Oct. 23
“Glaciers” is a solo exhibition by Mexico-based artist Magali Lara, co-curated by Department of Art and Art History faculty member Andrea Giunta and former faculty member Roberto Tejada. This exhibition is meant to commemorate markers in the histories of Argentina and Mexico. It serves also as an allegory about distances that can separate specific geography from eyewitness. Lara has exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City and the National Museum in Havana, Cuba. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City.

Various Artists, “Unveiled,” Sept. 24–Oct. 16
Center Space Project presents “Unveiled,” an exhibition composed of work from students and alumni from the Department of Art and Art History. The Center Space Project works collaboratively with fellow students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists to create engaging exhibitions and programs, promoting a strong student presence in the VAC.

Landon O’Brien and TJ Hunt, “Losing Faith,” Oct. 21–Nov. 13
“Losing Faith” is an exhibition of recent work by TJ Hunt and Landon O’Brien investigating artistic identity through recontextualization. The exhibition will examine what it means to self-identify as an artist and questions notions of originality and cultural value in a social economy that has largely lost confidence in the power of art as a vehicle to promote a message or enact change.

John Kingerlee, “John Kingerlee: A Painter’s Passage,” Oct. 29–Dec. 18
The VAC presents a solo exhibition of abstract, narrative and figurative paintings and mixed-media works of Anglo-Irish painter John Kingerlee. The exhibition was curated by the late New York Times art critic and University of Texas at Austin alumnus William Zimmer. In this survey of Kingerlee’s work are paintings the artist executed after moving to the remote Beara peninsula in southwest Ireland. Kingerlee’s works are deeply imbued with living part-time in a remote locale, at one with the landscape and bearing the hardships of daily life in order to paint.

Various Artists, “Combined: Department of Art and Art History Faculty Exhibition,” Nov. 5–Dec. 18
“Combined” features recent work by faculty artists in Studio Art, Art Education and Design from the Department of Art and Art History. The exhibition will span both the East Gallery and the Mezzanine Gallery, showcasing a large number of works over a diverse range of themes and media to offer a rich survey of recent activity by the university’s faculty artists.

Various Artists, “Anthropogenesis: Recent Work from Six Artists,” Nov. 18–Dec. 18
“Anthropogenesis” showcases the work of six contemporary artists who use animal imagery in ways ranging from exercises in draftsmanship to explorations of non-human consciousnesses. Jonathon Keats’ ballet for honeybees assumes an insect audience and performers. Jules Buck Jones’ new paintings of birds, reptiles and amphibians refer to mankind’s taxonomic organization of animal species. Margot Holtman and Kelly Rae Burns merge totemic human and animal forms, while Kristina Felix and Jill Pangallo relate human and animal identities. “Anthropogenesis” was curated by Lauren Hamer and Ariel Evans, doctoral students in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin.

For more information about the Visual Arts Center, please visit www.utvac.org

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